BIG CHANGES OK’D FOR 94-YEAR-OLD OREGON STATE SONG
Oregon lawmakers approved new lyrics for their state song this week, removing language that activists called racist and saying the song should reflect how Oregon has changed in the 94 years since it was adopted.
The resolution, which the state Senate passed 23-5 on Monday, would preserve the music of the state song, “Oregon, My Oregon,” but would change the lyrics to reflect the “significant cultural, historical, economic and societal evolution in Oregon,” according to its text.
The modifications include swapping the first verse of the song, which was written by John A. Buchanan with music by Henry B. Murtagh. Its original lyrics when it was first adopted in 1927 included the lines, “land of empire builders, land of the golden West; conquered and held by free men; fairest and the best.” Those would be replaced by, “land of majestic mountains, land of the great Northwest; forests and rolling rivers, grandest and the best.”
Modified lyrics would also replace a section in the second verse, so that “blest by the blood of martyrs” becomes “blessed by the love of freedom.”
After its passage in the Legislature this week, the resolution was filed Wednesday to the office of Oregon’s secretary of state, Shemia Fagan, a spokeswoman said.
The change in the lyrics follows nationwide protests last year against racial injustice, as well as pushes in cities and states to reconsider Confederate and colonial-era monuments and emblems.
In the resolution, lawmakers put the proposal in context of “an active and ongoing national movement to secure truly equal treatment for peoples of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.”
Native people had lived in Oregon “from time immemorial,” the lawmakers wrote, and Black and Chinese people had “suffered from de jure exclusion in the early decades of Oregon’s statehood.”
The lawmakers alluded to concern among musical groups about the original lyrics, saying that “many musicians, bands and choral groups would like to perform the Oregon state song but do not feel it is appropriate to present the current lyrics in public.”
“Oregonians of all backgrounds deserve an inclusive way to celebrate our great state in song,” the resolution said.
The new lyrics were proposed and written by Amy Donna Shapiro, a musician in Beaverton who had been advocating changes to the song for years.
“I didn’t like the song, and I didn’t like the words,” Shapiro said in an interview Wednesday. Recalling her days working as a music teacher and choir director, she said she had been reluctant to teach the original song because of its lyrics.
In testimony in support of the resolution, she wrote that the song’s original lyrics were “outdated, misleading and offensive words glorifying oppression and murder.”